This invention relates to apparatus and a method for accurately measuring the interior or lumen diameter of an artery or other vascular vessel to which a graft is to be surgically attached By determining the lumen diameter of the vascular vessel an approximately sized graft can be readily chosen which matches the measured dimension, leading to better connection between the graft and the vessel.
Certain disease processes, such as arteriosclerosis and syphilis, may cause damage to the wall of the aorta for example, resulting in dilation of the aorta and formation of a large bulge, or aneurysm. An aneurysm may produce pain and may disturb the blood flow in tributary vessels of the aorta. Aneurysms may also rupture, leading to possibly fatal internal bleeding. Treatment of an aneurysm involves surgical removal of the enlarged defective section of the vessel followed by replacement with a synthetic tubular element or graft which is surgically formed to the resected portions of the vessel.
One problem that arises in the replacement of a defective arterial or other vascular section with a tubular graft element involves selection of a proper size of the graft for the effected vessel. Such historically has been accomplished by measuring the inside diameter of the vessel with calipers which are bulky, hard to handle by the surgeon and often impractical due to lack of accessibility of the effected vessel portion Trial and error procedures have also been practiced. After the defective section of the vessel has been resected, and the adjacent vessel sections made ready for grafting, a fabric graft, for example, is matched up with the open vessel ends until a graft having a diameter complementary to the size of the exposed ends of the remaining artery sections is found.
While successful grafting of vascular vessels has obviously occurred following conventional surgical procedures, certain problems, noted above, have persisted. The apparatus of the present invention avoids at least certain of the prior art problems and may be employed by the surgeon to facilitate ease and accuracy of graft size selection.